


Noblesse oblige

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume III [7]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, F/M, Intrigue, M/M, Ten Years Later, True Love, Twenty Years After
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-05 12:11:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5374772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fates of gods and kings intertwine as the immortals gamble for celestial and worldly thrones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There is a fair bit of political intriguing going on after their return from England which we are not going to retell. The important thing is that Aramis kills a man because he laughed at Athos and they go on a road trip to Picardy together before overthrowing the government. And this is what happens next:

**Paris, March 1649**

In my rented domicile on rue Guénégaud, Aramis lay curled into my side, his face buried in the crook of my neck, his fingers drawing lazy circles over my ribs and underneath my shoulder blade. I don’t know if he had been consciously aware of it, but he had been humming, a soft tune, like a lullaby from his long deserted homeland, melancholy in a way that only a Slavic song can be.

“Aramis,” I spoke softly into the shell of his ear, still exposed to the elements as his hair hadn’t grown back as quickly as my own.

“Oh no.”

“What?”

“I recognize the sound of that. _Aramis_.” An angry puff of air scalded the space between my collarbones. “You’re about to say something I won’t like.”

“We can’t go on like this.”

“And there it is.” He rolled out of my arms and propped his head up on one of his hands. “Well, why not? What’s wrong with _this_? Why must you always seek to ruin my happiness?”

“Chyortik,” I smiled at him and brushed my fingers over the swell of his chest, as if to soothe his ragged breathing. “I would never wish to ruin your happiness, surely you must know that. But you and I need a… a cooling off period. Before someone else gets killed.”

“Gets killed?” his eyes widened, as if this was news to him. “You’re not blaming Charles on… Oh, Mother of God: you are!”

“Aramis, we have forgotten the world around us because we’ve been so focused only on each other,” I tried to explain.

“That death wasn’t our fault. It was your sister’s! There was nothing we could have done.”

“There was _plenty_ we could have done,” I stated, knowing that I did not need to elaborate. Still, I couldn’t help but continue, if only to self-flagellate properly. “A demigod, a Titan, and a bloodsucking creature of the night: we should have been unstoppable.”

“Why do I always have to be a ‘bloodsucking creature of the night’?” he pouted, attempting to distract me. 

“Alright then,” I conceded, “my chyortik. Is that better?” He glared at me. “Don’t change the subject. What happened in England was shameful. And now, you know, I can’t leave France because of it. Well, not for very long, in any event.”

“Because you’re going to single-handedly restore the English monarchy?” he huffed and rolled his eyes.

“Something like that, yes.”

“You want to leave me again,” he turned away, presenting me with his back, as was his custom whenever he was upset with me. “Twenty years apart wasn’t enough for you. You’re the biggest monster of us all.”

“Aramis..,” I sidled up to him, draping an arm over his form. He could, when he wanted to, make himself seem so small. “I’m just saying that we should take care of our other responsibilities. I told you before, I have to take Porthos to Greece, so, that’s what I plan on doing.”

“For someone whose heart is so tender, you can be immensely heartless,” he purred from the other side of the pillow and I pressed my mouth to his shoulder, letting my front teeth leave an imprint in his flesh. “For how long?”

“What?”

“Greece. For how long? And how am I to exist without you while you gallivant about Olympian realms?”

“Come with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Because you have to go to Normandy for the Bourbon nymph.”

“Yes,” he said and quickly added, “Well, _no_. That too, but…”

“It was kind of you to get her all of Normandy,” I laughed. “Are you going to leave her?”

“I am,” he turned in my arms and pressed his mouth to mine with a sense of desperation. “And you? Will you say your goodbyes to Marie?”

“I will,” I promised. “But then: Greece.”

“It was not just for Anne Geneviève that I got her Normandy, you know. It’s so her kin can keep an eye on Porthos’ estates too.”

“Chyortik, just when I least expect it, it turns out you’ve thought of everything.” I held him closer and wrapped my legs around his. 

“And yet, you’re leaving.”

“I will write you long letters,” I whispered into his hair, “mostly filled with misery of being so far away from you.”

“Monster,” he whispered back, his lips trailing over my own. 

“Why can’t you come with us?” I finally asked. “I know it’s not because you’re afraid of my sister. Chyortik isn’t afraid of anything.”

“Almost anything,” he breathed into my neck and I felt the nip of his fangs against my skin. “Because, Athos,” his dark eyes sparkled, “I want to be Pope.”

“Oh chyortik,” I laughed. “It’s a long rope ladder to climb from the abbey in Noisy-le-Sec to the Holy See.”

“Ah, but then you would get to do _this_ ,” he pressed the palm of his hand against my cock, which gave an enthusiastic jolt in response, “with the Holy Father. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you deviant?”

“I would,” I admitted, pulling his head back by the hair so that I could press my mouth against the bend of his neck. “And you, my dark Hyacinthus, would love to show all of the Roman world your bits dangling through the Papal chair.” My mouth traveled lower, while he tittered in my embrace, almost nymphic himself. “Your ecclesiastical ambitions, Aramis, never cease to be a source of entertainment.”

“It is a game,” he said, arching into my touch, as my mouth continued to travel lower, down his sternum, into the groove between his abdominal muscles. “Like the games you gods play with fates of mortals, only the only purpose here is to see if I can win.”

I wrapped my hand around the base of his cock, marveling at the way it fit into my palm, like a mighty rod, the Papal sceptre indeed. 

“Am I to wait then for you to attain the Throne of St. Peter when I return?” I asked, letting my breath trail over his tumescent and flushed flesh. It beckoned me and I could not resist wrapping my lips around it, first the head, then sliding down the shaft slowly, wishing to memorize the taste and feel of him for my journey home.

“I - the Throne of St. Peter, and you - the throne of England,” he chuckled and gasped. “No, no, I know it’s not for you. But what then? Will you meditate and write your memoirs, count? Like a proper country gentleman?”

I moaned around his shaft, sending shivers up his spine, which my fingers collected and stored in my memory cells for future reference. His own digits dug into my hair and his hips bucked up, shoving the length of his cock down my throat, until all I could do was swallow around him. The smell and taste of his arousal was potent and made my head spin. I already could not wait to be back from Greece, just so I could do it all over again. I pulled up and lapped along his cock and in between his heavy balls, taking each one in my mouth to lavish attention on before moving to the next target.

“Ah,” he writhed under me. “Your arguments are _most_ persuasive,” he gasped. 

I drew my lips over him again, with just enough pressure from my teeth to keep things interesting. His body felt pulled tight as a string under the caress of my hands.

“ _Fuck_ , Athos!”

A few more flicks of my tongue, a few more strokes of my fist, and the hopeful Holy Father was coming down my throat, calling out his Lord’s name in vain, because Jesus could not save him. Not from me.

We said our goodbyes the next day, having spent all night making up for lost time in advance. My limbs felt sated and my heart glowed, yet my eyes could not look their fill.

“I will be back as soon as Porthos is up to par again, you know that.”

“I know.”

“So… my regards to the Bourbon nymph.” I laughed, not wishing to say farewell.

“And you - give my regards to the Rohan nymph.” He bit my mouth as he kissed me, almost hard enough to break skin, and then licked over the seam of my lips as if to smooth over all past hurt.

“I will,” I grinned, holding him close, desirous only of delaying the moment of separation despite having been the one to suggest it. “One more thing, Aramis.”

“What more do you want from me, you torturer?”

“Don’t eat d’Artagnan while I’m gone.”

“He killed Rochefort!”

“Aramis,” I mouthed at the corner of his jaw, “I mean it. Please, don’t eat him.”

“Rochefort was the only mortal we trusted!” he writhed like the demon he was in my hold and then fell helplessly against me. “You ask me for the most horrid things, count. You really try the extent of your hold on me.”

“I know, my love,” I kissed the soft skin under his ear, “I know. I’m a despot.”

“Without equal!”

“I apologize.”

“You don’t mean it.”

“I do hate to upset you.”

“I hope Grimaud gives you unsurpassed lip on your journey!”

I picked up his hands in mine and kissed each one before lowering them again. He shook his head at me, but his eyes were smiling. For the time being, at least, the Gascon was safe. I stood at the crossroads and watched my demon ride off for Normandy. As for myself, while Grimaud made preparations for our upcoming journey to Hellas, I had one more important visit to pay. The Fronde may have ended, but one must never forget to propitiate the water gods before a long voyage.

***

I had been announced at the Hôtel de Luynes. My heart gave a jolt of anticipation as the doors parted, revealing the nymph inside her boudoir. Marie rose and stretched out her arms towards me and I pressed a warm kiss to each one of her immaculately white hands.

“Madame, you are magnificent as ever,” I breathed against the skin of her fingers.

“And you, Monsieur, are a careless and neglectful lover. There is only one excuse I will accept for the displeasure your absence has caused me.” She pulled me towards her chaise longue and we both fell upon it, my arm wrapped around her corseted waist. “Well, do not make me wait. Tell me.”

“I have been in England,” I said and then added, “with Aramis.”

“Ah!” her eyes sparkled. “England _with Aramis_ , that would explain an absence of eight months.”

“One of those months was spent losing a king his head,” I muttered, hanging my own head in shame. Her gentle fingers traced the outline of my jaw, lifting my chin back up.

“What terrible Hell that must have been for you, darling. But I take it, the previous seven months were pure Heaven?”

“Oh, Marie,” I shook my head, unable to express the conglomeration of my feelings to her. Fortunately, the wily nymph could always read into my deepest thoughts. “Our heavenly bliss lost England a monarchy.”

“But I find your wits firmly about you now, dear count,” she smiled. “You may have lost the war in England, but you have won the Fronde for France.”

“Merely by chance,” I said, lifting her hand to my lips again. “I came here as soon as I heard you were in Paris,” I added.

“I’m glad you did,” her hand trailed over my doublet. “I only have precious few years, if that, left while you might still find me beautiful. All men are like this, you see, and you are no different. Are you, my sweet scion of Olympus?”

“Nonsense,” I protested. “Age has no sway over your beauty, Madame.”

“Sweet demigod,” she laughed, twirling her fan. “Your love might blind you to Aramis’ demonic nature, but surely you do not love me enough to be blinded to the advances of my age.”

“Marie…”

“Oh, do not speak, lies never do fall easily from your lips,” her finger drew a line over my mouth. “And once I go into the waters, I’m afraid I shall not see you again until I am of an appropriate age. What is that these days? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

“Marie, I hate to hear you talk this way,” I blushed.

“Ah, finally, the demigod speaks the truth!” She fanned herself with the air of determination even though the room was not particularly hot. “Or would you perhaps like to meet again when I’m a little girl, count? I would not mind being brought up by you. You’ve done outstandingly with Segundo!”

“Now you’re just mocking me,” I said, rising, but her fingers clutched at my sleeve. 

“You are not grown used to female moods,” she said through tightly drawn lips. “Don’t go,” she added, and then more quietly, “Please.”

“I can see I have made you unhappy.” I lowered myself back onto the chaise longue and clasped her hand between both of mine.

“It isn’t you who have made me unhappy, Athos, although your absence has been difficult to bear now that each day brings with it the ticking of the great human clock.”

“How can I reassure you of my devotion?”

She watched me with heavily lidded eyes over the feathers of her fan, coy and conniving to the very end. At last, she uncovered her lips and I found her smiling.

“Give me something no woman has taken before.” I raised my eyebrows. “We won’t trigger the curse,” she added.

“I have a feeling you have a very particular ‘something’ in mind, duchess?”

“I do,” she grinned and her bright eyes sparkled with a youthful wickedness. “But it’s nothing you wouldn’t enjoy.”

“Oh, of _that_ ,” I said, smiling in return, “I have very little doubt.”

I allowed myself a glance in the direction of her bed chamber. What would the wily nymph want to play with this time? I had no doubt she had toys aplenty and inventiveness to rival that of the _Kama Sutra_.

“Not yet,” she purred, as if reading my mind. “First, you must entertain me with some gossip.”

“Madame la duchesse is usually more versed in gossip than I am,” I smiled taking her hand back into mine, feeling content that she had allowed it to rest there after the dubious greeting I had received.

“Before you brought Mazarin to his knees, when you first returned from England, what did you do?”

I thought back upon the events of the past weeks, many of them still a blur.

“Aramis fought with M. de Chatillon at Charenton,” I remembered.

“Oh, that feisty nightcrawler!” Marie laughed. “I heard Chatillon was dead, but not who killed him. What reason was there for this… duel?”

“I couldn’t be certain, Madame. Allegedly, M. de Chatillon had the misfortune of laughing at us.” 

She laughed in turn, flashing her teeth with feral glee to rival that of my flittermouse.

“And you, count? Did you slay many men at Charenton?”

“I no longer kill, Madame,” I replied and added, “if I can help it.” Mordaunt’s shade still haunted me. He had no peace while he lived, I hoped he would find it through whatever gates he passed. Perhaps all gates of the Underworld wiped your soul clean, much like the gates of Elysium.

“What did you do after Charenton?”

My eyes lit up and a smile crept up over my face. “I got myself arrested.”

“Oh, M. le comte, you rake!” she giggled and fanned herself boisterously.

“Indeed, by your good friend, Her Royal Majesty.”

“What on earth did you say to Anne?”

“I reminded her of a favor once rendered.”

“Oh no! That is so gauche, Monsieur!” But I could tell she was enjoying herself immensely. 

“Oh yes, Madame. Aramis had to raise an army to rescue me.” Her fanning hand worked faster. “He ended up not needing to use it, but I still thought it was a worthy gesture.”

“You’re both utterly mad,” she declared, bosoms heaving, her lips glistening with moisture. “Your endless love games can bring down entire monarchies!” I blushed at that. She did not realize the full extent of her own words. “And now what, my dear count?”

“Aramis is off to Normandy,” she frowned at the mention of Normandy, “and I will be going on an errand to Greece,” and then she pouted.

“You’re leaving me! So soon?”

“Oh, Marie, not you as well!” I slid down to the floor and buried my face in her voluminous skirts.

“Without him?” she asked from above my head and I nodded into her dress. I felt her hand gently stroke through my hair. “But you will not go before you’ve made up to me for all your neglect. And all that time wasted, plus more time to be wasted yet. Ah, dear Athos, you do not understand the passing of time like I do.”

I muttered a heartfelt request for forgiveness into her knees.

“Do you feel guilty, my friend?” I heard the smile in her voice before I even lifted my face to behold her.

“You are causing me to feel great remorse, Madame,” I declared, one of my hands still seizing one of her knees through the layers of her dress.

“How guilty do you feel?” she asked, her finger tracing the outline of my face. 

My eyes widened and she looked over my head towards her bed chamber. I licked my lips, and, not for the first time, wished that I could kiss her.

***

M. le comte _was_ a demigod. Many decades ago, while he was waxing poetic about his lover, Aramis had voiced his surprise at the fact that nobody had ever noticed Athos’ true nature. I had smiled and reminded my demonic paramour that nobody ever noticed _his_ true nature either – until it was too late, that is. “I lie, Marie,” Aramis had pointed out. “I lie and I dissemble. Athos is truth incarnate. He doesn’t hide, he walks proudly, with his head held high, presenting his chest to enemy bullets. He talks about Hadrian and Alexander as if he’d known them.”

Which he had. Athos was younger than me, for I had existed ever since the sweet waters of the river mixed with the salt waters of the ocean, and yet he had mingled with at least as many men whom humanity had taken to call ‘great’ as I had. My human existence was new. And I had grown to love it, for having a vessel of flesh afforded me great pleasure.

“You’re smiling, duchess,” Athos said, smiling likewise, with that twist of his lips that rendered his expression saucy and bashful at the same time. “Dare I inquire after your thoughts?”

“I was thinking of the pleasures ahead,” I replied, sliding my gloved hands up his bare thighs.

“The pleasures _ahead_?” He raised his eyebrows and his smirk deepened. The muscles of his stomach tensed and his cock jumped like a frisky _diable en boîte_.

“Oh, I assure you, count – compared with the pleasures that lie ahead, this-” I swiped my hand up his hip and across his taut abdomen, “is a mere child’s play.”

“I am intrigued,” he said and gasped, for I flicked his taut nipple with my fingertips.

“And rightly so!” Without taking my eyes off his face, I reached across to the treen casket on the table and liberated the godemiché nestled within. It was one of my favourites, crafted from rosewood by an artisan’s hand and adorned with fleur-de-lys carvings at the base.

Athos’ eyes kindled with divine light as he took in the sight, from the smooth tip all the way down to-

“There is a hole through the testicles, Marie,” he said and trailed his elegant slim fingers down the length of wood. He slipped one fingertip into the orifice and looked up at me. “I assume that it is here on purpose.”

“Based on my own design,” I explained. “Please, M. le comte, humour me and play with it.” I pressed it into his hand. The last time he had held one of my toys, he had been wearing gloves. Now, it was his naked skin that touched the shining wood in such intimate, tantalising manner. He gripped the testicles with one hand and slid his other up and down the length, the way I had seen him touch Aramis’ cock. For a moment, I felt a pang at the thought that the beautiful bloodsucker wasn’t here with us and wasn’t using that clever mouth of his to get Athos ready for the frivolities of the evening.

Athos flicked his thumb over the tip and looked at me again. “What would you have me do?”

“Suck it.” I leaned in and brushed the hairs on his chest with my breath as I moved up towards his face. The gauze of my chemise spilled over his chest and stomach, and his cock jolted into the soft fabric. His eyes were burning into mine as his lips parted and the rosewood head slipped into his mouth and then slipped out again. A flash of tongue as it lapped at the dildo, shocking pink against the dark wood, and the heat of his breath that swept past the thick phallus and alighted on my lips. I held his gaze as I licked a long path up the godemiché on the opposite side and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the tip.

“You will have to make it moist, Athos,” I told him. I reached into the casket once again to retrieve leather straps of a deep red and began to thread them through the holes in the testicles. Athos sucked in the tip again, fingers wrapped around the middle, and he fucked his mouth with it as I attached the straps. When he pulled it out, the wood glistened wetly.

“What do you have in mind, Marie?” he asked in a soft voice; yet I could hear in his timbre that he knew and – ah yes, his interest had been piqued. Its solid evidence throbbed between our bodies.

The casket also held a vial, which I uncorked and held out to Athos as I knelt up between his thighs. “Marie…” he whispered. Undeterred, I poured some of the vial’s contents over the rosewood, and Athos caught it mechanically, as if unwilling that a drop should be spilled. His hand moved up and down with easy confidence and for a moment I envied Aramis, for there were no barriers between the touch of that hand and his bare skin. _My_ skin was covered like that of a convent pupil or a modest widow and, not for the first time, I cursed Hera for her spiteful heart, befitting of a hag rather than of the Goddess of the Hearth.

“Take as much as you need, Athos,” I instructed him and began to wrap the leather straps around my hips and thighs, pulling my chemise up until it bunched between my thighs where it soaked up the evidence of my arousal and baring my stockinged legs to his view. He groaned, for my phallus and his had aligned and he slid both through his oiled fist. I pushed his thighs apart with my hands. His testicles lay heavy in the palm of my hand and my fingers caressed the soft flesh beneath. “You will have to get yourself ready for me. I can’t use the oil on you, for my gloves would soak it up.”

Once again, he groaned, and his stomach and thighs tautened as ripples of pleasure darted beneath his skin. His bitten lips, his flushed face made him look quite the ravished man, even before I had had my way with him. Lustful anticipation surged through him, wave after wave, and his slick hand crept into the crevice between his thighs. He closed his eyes before he dipped his finger in.

“Get on your knees,” I told him. “Let me help you with the oil.”

Moving like a man in trance, like a puppet whose strings I pulled with my voice alone, he rolled over and pushed himself up on his hands and knees. I poured oil over the swell of his arse and watched it ooze down towards his waiting fingers. I held him open with my thumbs as he massaged himself with long, slow strokes, and more than once I had to check myself, for my lips hungered for the touch of his skin and I craved to kiss along his spine as it dipped and rose in a graceful arch.

At last, his fingers slipped out. He had pressed his face into the pillow and his long, dark hair tumbled over his face and his shoulders. I neither saw his expression nor heard a word escape his lips, but there was no mistaking the language of his body. The rosewood tip slid in easily and I stilled, watching his muscles shudder at the sensation of being filled. That powerful, beautiful body, so much larger and stronger than my own, and it was mine to take. I moved slowly, pushing the dildo in with my hand rather than with a shove of my hips, and Athos groaned.

“Is this all right?” I stroked the curve of his hip and up his flank that was heaving like that of a horse that had been ridden too hard. No word came over his lips and I snaked my hand around his middle to feel for his cock, which I found ramrod hard and damp. “Push back, Athos,” I urged him with my words and my hands. “Show me how deep to go.”

The rosewood length disappeared inside him centimetre by centimetre. He was panting, skin flushed and glistening with perspiration, his thighs spread open and trembling. I held still, for the solid length of wood that rose erect from my groin like the horn of the unicorn (though I was neither as pure nor as sublime as the mythological equine) was rigid and unrelenting, and less suited for the kind of sport in which we were engaging than a human phallus.

Athos pulled back and rocked his hips towards mine again. There was enough space left between our bodies for me to slip my hand between his legs and wrap my fingers around his prick. It twitched in my grip as Athos began to fuck himself into my fist and onto my godemiché. A few hard shoves, a muffled cry, and another silk glove ruined as he spilled himself over my hand in a hot gush. I waited for the tremors to subside before I pulled the rosewood out slowly and watched him collapse into the sheets. As I loosened the straps around my legs, I realised that my chemise was drenched with what Aramis referred to so charmingly as ‘Loire waters’.

Determined not to waste such an excellent opportunity to entertain my shaking, nymph-ridden lover with a lewd display, I stretched out by Athos’ side and dipped my fingers between my own legs. Damp with his essence, the silk rubbed delightfully against my swollen flesh and I was gasping out my pleasure before long, while the beautiful demigod watched me with eyes agleam with Olympian fire.

He shifted closer and pressed his hot mouth to my shoulder, scalding me through the sleeve of my chemise. “I wish I could touch you,” he said, and there was a sadness in his voice that I had not heard in it before.

“So do I,” I whispered back. I lifted my hand to his face and he kissed my fingers, sucking the drenched silk into his mouth.

“You’re beautiful,” we both spoke at the same time, and we both smiled.

“Thank you for that.” I trailed my hand over the curve of his shoulder and down his arm and I could have sworn that he blushed.

“Thank you, Madame.” He flashed me a small smile. “I am glad you enjoyed yourself.”

“Tremendously. But-” I sighed. “I can’t help but regret that it is always armed combat between us, count.” I gestured at my partially clothed state and at the dildo that, still tied to my body with loosened strings, protruded forlornly from my bunched-up chemise. “Unlike Aramis, I can never indulge in a Hellenic wrestling match with you.”

“Ah! I’m afraid you would not have been eligible for a wrestling match in my time, Marie, on account of your sex.”

I laughed. “In your time or in any other time, count.” I pulled off the straps, tugged my chemise down my legs and pressed up against him. “I don’t have many regrets on account of my sex, Athos. But this one pleasure of which I am deprived… this one itch that is impossible to scratch – it almost makes me wish I was born a man.”

Athos grimaced and laughed. “Wishing to change your sex? You sound like my father.”

“With one material difference. I assure you – man or not, I would never take anything from you that you’re not willing to give.”

He seized my hand and kissed it fervently. “I know, Marie.”

***

I found Porthos back in Bracieux, looking about his domicile with a new air lent to him by his recently acquired barony.

“Cousin!” he exclaimed upon beholding me. “I did not expect to see you again so soon!”

“I hope you haven’t unpacked, my dear Porthos,” I said embracing him.

“Are we leaving on a journey?” he asked, with a look of distrustful weariness.

“I’m taking you home. It’s time for you to go back and see your Da,” I explained. 

His eyes lit up, and he twirled his moustache with some of the air of the olden days of our acquaintance. “I’ll say! That will be a fine time, Athos! But…” his look turned worriedly upon me. “Will it be safe for you?”

I wrapped my arms around him as if he were a trunk of an old baobab tree and mumbled, “It isn’t myself I’m worried about.”

He squeezed his arms around me, our eyes met, and an understanding passed between us. “Thank you,” he said. “I do believe this pilgrimage is overdue.”


	2. Chapter 2

_July 9, 1649_  
_To: l’abbé René d’Herblay at the convent of Noisy-Le-Sec_  
_From: Hellas_

My beautiful love,

Never does a day pass without your face being the first thing I remember each morning, as I awaken, and the last thing I think of as I drift to sleep. Each breath, each step is full of you. Sometimes, I can almost feel you with me, around me, inside me. My Aramis.

I have felt quite safe from _them_ in these parts. I have seen my brother, who bears me no ill will. He says any reasonable god would not expect over three thousand years of servitude. We both had a good laugh about what constitutes “reasonable” around these parts. He also reminded me that my mother did share a name with the Goddess of Peace, which made my eventual turn from war not particularly surprising. One day, Porthos and I beheld a magnificent white bull upon a hill in Delphi, but it did not approach us, nor did we approach it. I have not seen my sister.

I’m afraid that we will be detained here in Hellas longer than I expected. While the trip has indeed been marvelously restorative to our friend, it appears that even the Sun can discover uses for his progeny, and so Porthos and I find ourselves tasked with a family matter requiring our particular set of skills. Have no fear, my love, ‘tis nothing that should cause either one of us any harm.

Other than your absence, which I feel keenly, it feels incredible to be back home, Aramis. The grass is greener here, and the sea is bluer, and the air feels holier than any other place I’ve been. And you and I too, we were happy here, the first time, weren’t we? I remember it so.

Be good, my chyortik. I love you.

Athos

***

**Noisy-le-Sec, July 1649**

I had not often visited the village of Noisy-le-Sec. It had been the realm over which my Bourbon cousin ruled from her lofty perch in her uncle the archbishop’s chateau. Still, I couldn’t help but smile as my carriage drove past the convent of the Jesuits, behind whose walls the beautiful demon had so often entertained his idol and the other ondine (albeit, to my knowledge, never both at the same time).

A small house stood at the edge of the village. I had first set foot in it not long after the birth of Louis XIV, for I was one of the four living confidantes of the _secret_.

Well. _Five_ , if you counted the immortal creature of the night who was smiling at me from the shady corner tucked into the stone wall that protected the charming little garden and house. He bowed with his customary ease and grace, and his cassock folded around him like the wings of a majestic bird of prey.

The garden stood in full bloom. Aramis slithered sinuously into the shadow of a tree bearing plump _Téton de Vénus_ peaches, and a few prematurely wilted leaves rained down on his black hair and cassock. A figure appeared in an upstairs window: a pale boy of thirteen, gawky and pimply-faced, was gaping down on us. He soaked up the sight of Aramis’ warlike air that stood in contrast to his demure black cassock, and of my black dress and the flame-coloured ribbons in my hair. Like all male adolescents, he resembled a plucked gander rather than a human being. Yes, he would do. He would take to water like a… duck.

“He is ripening apace,” I said with a smile and indicated the waif with my eyes. Aramis’ gaze followed mine, and he smiled at the apparition and bowed, affecting a degree of humility that befitted a poor abbé.

“He is going to be a man soon,” Aramis turned back to me.

“Yes.” I sighed. “A human life flows fast.”

“And yet its worth is rarely judged by the number of years it lasted. It is achievements that humans appreciate.”

“You know what else they appreciate, Aramis?” I smiled at him and brushed the tips of my fan’s feathers over his lips. “ _Sacrifice_.”

“I believe you are speaking of _gods_ , duchess.”

“Ah!” I laughed. “Some humans like to play gods.”

“Like the late cardinal.”

“He would have made a worthy Divus, had he been born in a different time.”

“Once I am Pope,” Aramis said with unbridled mirth, “I shall canonise M. de Richelieu. Saint Armand-Jean du Plessis, patron saint of cats, cardinals and capuchin monkeys.”

“Oh, I am looking forward to your pontificate, my dear abbé.” I clapped my hands in delight. “Shall you require a papal mistress, or will your love for your god keep you fully occupied?”

“Have you ever had a papal lover, duchess?”

“Alas, the closest I ever came to debauching a successor of Saint Peter was with Giacomo Boncompagni, who was merely the son of a pope.”

“Morbleu!” Aramis exclaimed, assuming the aspect of the young musketeers I had known and loved thirty years previously. “This is unsupportable! You, Madame, deserve better.”

“I do indeed. And I am delighted that it is you who will aid me in my ambitions.”

“Always.” He took my hand in his and kissed it with tender reverence. “Forever.”

“For which year have you scheduled your pontification, sweet Baphomet? We must time it so that my new reincarnation is at the right age to receive the Holy Father’s attentions. It would be quite something to be plucked by the Pope.”

He bowed. “For which year have you scheduled your rebirth, lovely Ondine? I shall schedule my ascension of the papal throne for fifteen years hence.”

I sighed again. “I must admit I am rather attached to this body-”

“It has been an exceptionally delectable one.”

“Quite! It is highly regrettable that I cannot keep it. But the boy is getting on in years. Soon, he will grow obstreperous.”

“The boy?” Two delicate eyebrows shot up. “What, pray, has he to do with your projected rebirth, duchesse?”

“Why, M. l’abbé!” I cried out. “Surely you must know that I plan to use him to strengthen the ties between the ondines and the most powerful dynastic houses in Europe. The blood of the Bourbons and the blood of the Habsburgs flows in that boy’s veins, my kin will greatly appreciate the,” I laughed, “sacrifice.”

“You plan to throw the son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria into the river?” Aramis asked in gentle tones.

“For which other purpose have we kept him alive all those years?” I said. “To contest his twin brother’s throne one day?”

“Well,” Aramis was looking at me oddly, and then he laughed. “Yes!”

“M. l’abbé!” I gazed into Aramis’ eyes and saw nothing but my own reflection in the blank, black mirrors. “You find me flabbergasted.”

Boreas himself had torn through the sun-dappled garden and stripped away Aramis’ light tone, the playful air, leaving nothing but the core of ice. Had I been a mortal woman, I would have shuddered. But I had been born in the whirlpool in which the waters of the Loire and the ocean mingled. The calm, dark cold of the maritime abyss rose from the depth of my soul and I faced the demon proudly.

“We must confer, Monsieur.”

“Indeed, Madame.”

We stared at each other, and then Aramis spoke first. “The boy has been groomed to be… grateful.” His gaze strayed to Philippe’s preceptor, who kept a subservient distance. “He will make a much better king than his brother, who is growing up under the auspices of the Italian _stronzo_.”

“A better king for whom? For you?”

Aramis waved a dismissive hand. “Please, Marie. Don’t pretend that you don’t appreciate the idea of putting a king on the throne whom you can guide as you please. And don’t forget,” he leaned in with a glint in his eye, “that you are the only woman – save his old nurse and his mother – whom he will ever see as he grows up. You are bound to leave an impression on his adolescent mind.”

“I believe that the boy’s isolation is not the only reason why I should leave an impression.”

“Are you sure, Madame?” His lips twisted in a cruel smile. “Don’t forget that this body is not as young as it used to be.”

“And don’t you forget that the new body will be able to bear a future heir to the throne without the need of any _Jesuitical_ machinations.”

“Only if the king _marries_ you. Bastards don't ascend thrones.”

“Oh my sweet _boy_. How little you understand. If a child of the Bourbons and Habsburgs is given to the waters, a daughter of both dynasties will be born to the humans: the most-coveted commodity in the matrimonial market.”

He smirked. “You want to be queen.”

“ _You_ want to be pope.” I fanned myself languidly. “Besides, it's been a long time since I last was queen. I quite fancy another go, now that queens no longer get put to death willy-nilly. Unlike kings,” I added with a laugh, “whose servants _failed_ them.”

Aramis’ fangs flashed in the green shade like diamonds.

“Help me put Philippe on the throne, and you could be reborn as his daughter by his future wife,” the tempter bargained.

“He is required to seal the pact with my kin.” I snapped my fan closed and pointed it at the demon. “That’s the nature of the ancient bargain between humans and Ondines; it has to be renewed in every generation. If I don’t offer the waters anything, I will revert to water when this body dies.”

“You had three decades, duchess, to take care of matters of succession. Your own children-”

“My own children have failed me. If you remember, none of my daughters has married. Two became abbesses to make sure that they will never have issue.”

“Daughters of such a mother, and they eschew the pleasures of the flesh.” The fervid gleam in Aramis’ eyes scorched my skin. “ _Where_ did you go wrong, Marie?”

“Don’t make the mistake to assume, M. l’abbé,” I disabused him, “that men are indispensable to women’s pleasures. Or to other men’s pleasures, for that matter. That part of you that you believe to have magical properties is easily replaced. Even your godling knows that.”

He blinked, for once discountenanced. “What?”

“Did he not tell you?” I pressed my advantage with a charming smile. “Ah, so you do keep secrets from each other. I commend you. That is the secret of a happy marriage. Trust me.”

“Didn’t tell me what?” Aramis stalked me as I lured him from the shadow of the peach tree into a hidden nook behind the house, away from the preceptor’s eyes.

“He has given himself to me, Aramis,” I breathed into his face. Blood rose to his cheeks and to his lips. Those black eyes that I had so often kissed were pits of burning tar. He would have immolated me, but water doesn’t burn.

“Given himself to you?” Hissing the words from between his fangs like a serpent. “ _How?_ ”

“You know how. Or are you asking me for details? Would you like me to describe to you how he spread his body to be taken?”

Aramis snarled. His hand clawed at the wall behind my head as he loomed over me, trembling with the urge to strike. And yet… and yet Aramis never assaulted a woman, neither with fists nor fangs. Words were his only weapon against me, even as he pulled back his hand and I saw drops of blood stain his fingers and nails where they had scratched at the stones.

“Bitch!”

“I didn’t take anything that he refused to give.”

“You took advantage of his tender, bruised-” He bit his lip and blood spilled from the wound. “You took advantage of the guilt he felt after-”

“That he felt after you _failed_ the king?” I glanced up, in the direction of the window haunted by the royal twin. “Not for the last time, I dare say, if you consider the other Bourbon boy the rightful king.”

“There is no reason why I shouldn’t.”

“He was born eight hours after his brother,” I said and Aramis startled. “You didn’t know that? Louis XIV is the rightful heir to the throne. Philippe would always be a usurper. Or a regicide. Oh, I forget,” I laughed. “It would be _you_ who is the regicide, mon ami diabolique, am I right?”

“Look who’s talking!”

We stared at each other, flushed from the heat of our quarrel, our chests heaving with laboured breaths. Around us, the song of the summer’s day faded and stilled, for not a bird stirred in the garden, not a leaf rustled. The rush of blood in my ears was that of a river roaring through gorges, and I could sense the rush of Aramis’ blood even through the layers of fabric that were draped between us.

I smiled and brushed my fan over his cheek. “Am I forgiven?”

The gleaming embers burst into flame once again. “You believe yourself invulnerable, Marie,” Aramis hissed. “Trust me: you are not. I humoured you by permitting that little affair of yours to continue, but not anymore. You have crossed a line.”

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed into the demon’s face. “ _You_ permitted it?” I giggled. “Are you his _guardian_? His _moral_ guardian, perchance?” I thrust my hand between his legs and Aramis snarled. “You can’t even guard your own morals, chéri.”

My feet left the ground, Aramis’ arm like a vice around my middle, my legs around his hips, and he pressed me against the wall with his body. His teeth at my neck, grazing my skin till it hurt. He didn’t draw blood; he licked and sucked at my throat as we both struggled to tug my petticoats and his cassock out of the way. His hand between our bodies, between his legs. Between mine. And then, his mouth, hot and insistent and furious, sucking on my lips, fucking my mouth with his tongue, and he was filling me, slick and thick and we both groaned as heat boiled and seethed, spilling from his body into mine and back again. Aramis slammed me into the wall, once, twice; hard, punishing thrusts that made my head spin and my loins burn.

“More!” I panted into his hair, clinging to him with my arms and legs. “Harder!”

His fingers stabbed into my thigh; pain shot up to my groin and exploded just as he shoved his cock all the way up. Waves of pleasure surged through me, and Aramis, Aramis, trapped between my legs, went rigid and still, panting into my neck.

He released me from his shaking arms and I staggered back to the ground. I rubbed my legs against each other, where his release and mine rendered my skin sticky. Aramis’ flushed face, his burning eyes. His swollen lips. So beautiful, my demon lover. So vicious. Fire and ice, wrapped in the thin membrane of human skin. Lava erupting from the heart of a glacier.

I lifted my hand and touched his cheek lightly. “You think yourself so refined, Aramis,” I told him gently. “But I know you. You are a feral creature, my love, untamed and untameable. Your dark desires will not be repressed.”

He stepped back and bowed with a cold irony of manner. “Thank you. I appreciate your appraisal, Madame.”

“Then listen to me.” I seized his arm. “Relinquish your plans. Give Philippe to me. You won’t regret it.”

Aramis looked at me, and for the span of a breath, I knew that I had won.

But then: his face froze, his eyes closed. His mouth moved. “It appears we fight on opposing sides henceforth, Madame.”

I breathed in, and then out. I held out my hand. “May the better woman win.”

He kissed my hand with ironic reverence. As he straightened back up, his gaze fell on the window above our heads, and a smile twisted his mouth. In the next moment, he was gone with a swish of his cassock.

I straightened my petticoats. I patted my flame-coloured ribbons into place. Behind the window, the pale boy stood rigid and flushed. Wait for me, sweet Bourbon-Habsburg child, wait for me. One day soon I will free you from behind these walls and I will lead you down the path towards a new life. 

***

**Delphi, Greece, July 1649**

The air of Hellas bristled with sunshine. I felt reborn, as if the rays of sun have reconstituted me on an elemental level. My eyes saw further, my hands gripped firmer, my taste buds - for so long dormant - cried tears of joy as flavors of our motherland burst in my mouth and filled my senses with vigor.

Walking through the ruins of Delphi, my eyes fell on a statue, its familiar lines holding my gaze until I heard Grimaud’s voice behind me.

“Ah look, Kyrios, it’s your other immortal beloved.”

“Grimaud, we’re not here for you to be a pest,” Athos groused and then I recognized the catamite from his garden. Antinous, they called him. The Greco-Roman divus who died too soon.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to resurrect him for you?” the Grigori wheedled my cousin. “He was so gentle and kind, and had the voice of Orpheus himself, and truly did adore you.”

“He sounds lovely,” I turned to Athos. “Why didn’t it work out?”

“Oh, because Kyrios was falling head over heels indeed!” Grimaud’s eyes shone with wicked glee.

“Why is that bad?” I asked.

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?”

“Silence, Grimaud!”

“He never would have dared suck your blood, like that evil flitterbat. Oh, Kyrios, let me resurrect him for you!”

“I said _silence_!”

We walked on for a while, in the _silence_ demanded by Athos, as he navigated the Omphalos of the Universe.

“Don’t you need his remains to resurrect him, anyways?” I couldn’t help but ask the Grigori, who had fallen behind me with an expression of constant exasperation. “I thought no one knew where Hadrian had hidden his body.”

“ _I_ know,” Grimaud declared, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s in the Villa Adriana, in Tivoli. I know where to dig. We could go there, Monsieur Porthos. Italy isn’t far!”

“You pestering gnat!” Athos veered upon his guardian. “I’ll cut out your tongue and feed it to the Titans in Tartarus!”

At that moment, Athos’ ire appeared instantaneously quenched, as an unusual sight caught his eye and then our own gazes followed to behold an enormous white bull upon the hillside.

“You don’t think it’s…” I started.

“What else would that be?”

“Shouldn’t you… um…”

“If He has something to say to me, He can come say it,” Athos stated and walked in the opposite direction, on the downward sloping verdant hill.

He sat, overlooking the landscape below us, and I sat down next to him, observing him with a cautious air. His lips were drawn in a tight line and his eyes appeared to glisten. I placed my hand upon his shoulder, and he slumped against me, as if exhausted.

“Do you ever,” he began, “just… wish that it was all over?”

“You should not talk like this,” I spoke, letting my fingers run through his hair as if I was trying to soothe a raging stallion. His breath felt even, but his mind still raced away from him, I could not tell whence. “Besides, we need to get you home to Aramis.”

“Aramis,” I could feel his pulse quicken under my fingers at the mere mention of his beloved. “Do _you_ think he’s evil?”

I frowned. A few years ago, I had been certain he was. But now… “He’s better when he’s with you,” I replied somewhat evasively. “Do you think _I’m_ evil, Athos?”

“You’re not evil, Porthos. You are primal.”

“Perhaps then so is he?”

He looked up and his eyes met mine. In them I read affection and gratitude, and then I slapped his shoulder to indicate a call to action.

“Come, cousin. It’s a long way to Tartarus, and only your brother Apollo knows how to get there.”

It was the reason we had come to Delphi in the first place. Apollo was the only Olympian god who had been imprisoned in Tartarus by Zeus, and our only hope for fulfilling my Da’s request.

“It would almost be easier to just have Him toss us in there,” Athos muttered, frowning upwards, in the direction of the white bull.

“I’m sure he’d be glad to oblige,” I laughed. “But I’m more concerned with being able to come _out_ of Tartarus, rather than find my way in.”

“Let’s find Apollo.”

We clambered back up to the ruins of the ancient sanctuary, where the fumes that the old Pythias used to inhale still permeated to the air above. Here, in this holy place, we heard a dangerous secret, a hidden path revealed, far below Hades, that led us straight into Tartarus - where my Da had a question to ask of his own Da.

_How much longer?_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Melun, July 1654**

It was a several days’ ride to Blois from Marseille, where Porthos and I both got off the ship bringing us back from Hellas. Porthos was rejuvenated and armed with a secret arsenal of sunshine, and I fueled on by the hope of being reunited with my beloved again.

I was dirty and tired from all the time spent in the saddle, followed closely by Grimaud, who entered Bragelonne as if he, and not I, was the true master of the place. I felt too exhausted to argue, choosing the comfort of my long-abandoned bed instead of the comfort of beating him about the face as I once would have.

The next day, I found the château to be strangely quiet, until I realized that it had been missing a key inhabitant.

“Where the hell is Segundo?” I asked my bewildered domestics. I may have been gone for years, but parrots were more long-lasting than humans.

It was then that an angel knocked on my door, a blonde angel in the guise of little Louise de La Vallière, accompanied by her maid Marceline. Except, she wasn't quite the shy eight year old doll she had been when last I left Bragelonne, but had rather molded into something almost resembling a woman. She limped in carefully, causing me a pang of guilt and worry as I thought of my parrot. The young lady curtsied and batted her eyelashes at me in a way that was simultaneously timid and playful, as only a barely adolescent female could manage.

“I heard M. le comte had returned,” she spoke quietly yet gracefully, “And I had a message for you from your friend, Monsieur.”

“Which friend, Mademoiselle?” I smiled at the child.

“Your priest friend, Monsieur. I had been taking care of Raoul Segundo in your absence, M. le comte, for several years,” she went on to explain to my growing amusement, “and your friend showed up one day, and took him from me!” Her diminutive foot tapped in petulance as she recounted this brazen theft. “And he left me this to give to you. He said,” she paused to recall, “Ah, yes. He said - ‘If you ever see this bird’s _anthropomorphic_ father again, you give him this.’”

She curtsied again, charmingly, and then extended her little hand in which she held an elegantly folded note. I recognized the neat handwriting immediately.

“Thank you, Mademoiselle de La Vallière,” I took the missive from her hand. “And give my regards to your honorable mother, the marquise de Saint-Rémy.”

 _You utter bastard,_ the note read, _if you ever want to see your damned bird alive again, come to Melun. You’ll find me at the vicarage._

My entire body appeared to heave in anticipation. Thoughts of Aramis, flushed with rage, were always an exceptionally powerful motivator.

As I was riding up to the village of Melun, my eyes took in bucolic loveliness to rival my own refuge in Bragelonne. From the fields, presided over by the towers of windmills, a lovelorn song carried as if sung by sirens, but in their stead came long-braided peasant girls with aprons full of ripe apples and ceramic jugs frothing over with fresh milk. White doves roosted and cooed on the rim of the well unmolested by the sleeping spaniel curled up nearby. Little boys chased chickens across the town square while flowers fell over trellises down from each window and flowering blossoms rose up all the way to the thatched rooftops.

I stopped before a charming cottage, plastered over with red brick, with vines climbing along the gutters, and a cross, in carved stone, surmounting the ridge of the roof. Azaleas and begonias in bloom spilled over the low garden fence in the back. And, inexplicably, a litter of ginger-furred kittens frolicked on the front steps.

Was this really the place where I would find the fierce, blood-drinking, murderous creature of the night, and abomination from beyond the grave? Or, at least, that’s what Grimaud had been asking me, while my heart beat a boisterous staccato within my breast.

“Do you think he eats the kittens, Kyrios?”

“Silence, gnat! Go stable the horses.”

I picked up one of the kittens assaulting my ankle with soft fur, and he burrowed into my collar as I quietly entered the cottage. Down the short corridor and through the aperture into the study, where I leaned against the heavy wooden door frame, I observed the Wallachian revenant and love of my unnaturally prolonged existence, hunched over his manuscripts in a decidedly unthreatening posture. He appeared oblivious to my presence, when a pathetic mewl escaped my feline friend, who got his tiny paws all tangled up in my long hair.

“Bazin, feed the god damn cats!” Aramis pronounced with an air of exasperation and, finally, lifted his nose out of whatever it was that had held him in such studious thrall. “You,” he said upon beholding me.

“Me,” I agreed, disentangling the kitten and placing him back down onto the floor. The fickle furball immediately shot under Aramis’ desk and disappeared. “Hello, angel.”

My words had disarmed him, I could tell as much, as his militant demeanor had given way to a softer expression and he unfurled to his full height, rising out of his chair.

“Hello to you too,” he snapped, taking a few long strides towards me, while I waited with my arms folded across my chest. For a moment, I was fairly sure he was going to slap me.

“Hello Rohan nymph!” We were interrupted by a sudden familiar screech from a cage in the corner, where imprisoned Segundo flapped his wings to the time of my own beating heart drum.

“You kept him caged up!” I frowned with indignation.

“You’re lucky he’s alive at all! You’ve been gone for over five years!”

“Aramis,” I sighed, “I came back as soon as I could.”

“From _where_?” he hissed.

“Tartarus.”

“Anyone else, and I would think this was poetic hyperbole,” he frowned and then quoted my own words back at me. “ _’Tis nothing that should cause either one of us any harm,_ you wrote! I thought, sir, you never lied!”

“Well,” I spread my arms. “You can check, if you like. I’m completely unharmed.”

It was then that he did, in fact, slap me. And then our mouths clashed together and our arms encircled each other’s bodies. His hair had grown back into shimmering tresses and his curls fell over my fingers just as tendrils of flowers spilled over the windows of his vicarage. I felt the insistent beat of the flittermouse wings trapped in his ribcage.

“My angel,” I breathed into his kiss, “My sweet angel.”

He growled and dragged me deeper into the back of the cottage, until a door slammed and was latched behind us, and then he pushed me onto the bed. He straddled me with the speed of a wildcat, and my mind flew back to our first meeting on the battlefield. Rage and lust came off him in intoxicating, impossibly alluring waves, and my fingers slotted into the sharp grooves of his hipbones, like centuries before, when we were enemies before we became lovers. And eventually friends.

“You seem really on edge, kitten,” I whispered as his fangs dropped with a loud click. “Should we talk before we…”

“No.”

“Whatever you wish, my love.”

“I _wish_!” For a moment, he looked as if he was about to actually share what was on that sphinxian mind of his, but then he thought better of it. “I _wish_ for you to shut up and fuck me.”

“Come here,” I beckoned him down until I could wrap my fingers around the nape of his neck and guide his mouth to the column of my own neck. My other hand reached for his cock and rubbed the engorged flesh through the material of his cassock. “What is your current title, _padre_?”

“It’s bishop, _count_.”

“Chyortik has been busy bedeviling, I see,” I laughed and reached inside my own breeches to allow both our liberated cocks to slide slowly against each other.

His tongue trailed over the pulse of my jugular. “Have you missed this, Athos?” I felt his nails digging into my flesh through my doublet, which he hadn’t bothered asking me to remove. “Have you missed me? Or were you too busy fucking all of Olympus and Tartarus too?”

“Beautiful angel is the most unreasonably jealous kitten in the world,” I chuckled. My fingers traced the bumps of his vertebrae. “Drink my blood, Aramis.”

“Did you fuck Porthos, too? Or did you let him fuck you? Maybe _this_ ,” he bucked against me, “isn’t big enough for you anymore?”

“Aramis,” I spun us both around, pinning him beneath my weight to the mattress. I swallowed his protests and kissed him until his delicate lips began to bruise under the pressure of mine. “Aramis…”

“You weren’t supposed to be gone for this long,” he said, his eyes growing softer yet still fixed on the bulging vein in my neck.

I tore open his cassock, sending buttons flying all over the bedroom.

“Asshole!” he hissed and sank his nails into my ribs. “Who is going to pay for this?”

“Well, I was hoping I would,” I said, losing myself in the magnificent, black, kindling fire of his eyes. His fangs flashed and his hands shot up to my neck.

My blood flowed into him as I drove my cock into the yielding flesh of his body. His arms and his legs shook as I filled him to the brim with my blood and my flesh.

“I love you.”

“You can’t leave again.”

“I won’t.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

I pressed my lips to his soaked hairline and then trailed them down his face, slowly worshipping each curve of his beloved features, as his body relaxed from throes of ecstasy around mine. His hand pulled on my hair to lift up my head and his tongue trailed over the wounds his teeth had torn into my neck, healing over the traces he had left behind. Still seated in him like that, my body thrummed with vigor, a dangerous passion that once lit could burn down the world. Moments like those, I did not care if the world burned around us. Fire could not kill me.

Although it could probably kill _him_.

“Kitten, you’re still frowning,” I said, kissing the lines forming over the bridge of his nose. “I remain at your service to unfurl those beautiful eyebrows. What can I do to you, Aramis?”

His fingers gently traced over the lines of my face. “You’ve acquired a tan,” he replied, unhelpfully.

I frowned in turn. “It will fade soon enough.”

“Hm…” His fingers twirled into my hair, just as the actual kitten’s paws had done earlier.

“Aramis,” I nuzzled against his jaw, kissed down the ligaments of his neck and felt him swallow. “Tell me, my love. What’s wrong?”

He sighed and turned his face away from my gaze. “Today is July fourth,” he said.

“Is it? I’ve lost track of time, I admit.” I shrugged. “Time does pass differently down there, just like on Olympus.”

“No,” he repeated, with more purpose. “It’s fucking July the fourth!” I stared at him blankly. “You've been gone so long, and… And I thought I might never see you again!”

“Aramis, what is July fourth?” I asked, feeling that I was missing an important part of the puzzle.

“That day,” he barely breathed and shut his eyes. “ _Chartres_.” A shiver ran through his limbs and I pressed my lips against his, prying the seam open with my tongue, until he was kissing me back and his arms were around my neck again, holding me close. “Athos…”

“Hush, kitten. I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Forgive me, my love.”

“Not ever again?” he blinked up at me.

“Not ever, Aramis.”

***

Time meant nothing. I had been born four hundred years ago. My body was that of a man of twenty-three. My face was what I wished it to be. In the salons of Madame de Rambouillet, of Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, I passed for a man of thirty-seven years of age – to the great amusement of Madame de Lorme, who pronounced me the greatest courtesan of all: “I believe every single one of us envies you your good fortune when it comes to picking patrons, M. d’Herblay,” she’d told me once. “I believe you have been a frequent guest at the Epicurean fetes given by the Surintendant des Finances – and a favourite with the nymphs of Vaux,” she had added with a laugh.

Five years had passed since Athos had left for the land of his birth (which might or might not have been the land of Porthos’ birth, for the last I’d heard was that he was the son of a Spartan warrior-queen). Five years, which I had spent building a powerful alliance and missing Athos. My longing for my godling was like a dull toothache, throbbing through my flesh and blood, yet not piercing me through and through. Time meant nothing. Five years had passed in France, whereas not a week had passed in Tartarus.

He was sleeping in my arms now, my Hellenic idol. Thinner than I had seen him last; his skin darker, his hair longer and silkier. More beautiful than ever. More beloved. More _mine_.

As though my thoughts had penetrated into his dreams, Athos stirred in my arms and turned his head. His lips against my throat, and a jolt of pleasure shot down my spine and exploded in my loins. My fingertips rested against soft hair. His skin, so damp and warm against mine; the damp hairs on his chest, the dark line down his stomach – a pleasure-path to his groin, which lay soft and spent and oh so enticing within my reach. Gods, Titans or Heroes – had the Achaeans kept him any longer, I would have followed him into the underworld like Orpheus had followed Eurydice. I knew the way to Hades, for it led through the Devil’s Throat cave in the Rhodope Mountains. I required no lyre to charm the beasts. I needed no song to make nymphs and gods weep. I would tear off the balls of Hades and the wings of Thanatos and fly to my godling if ever Death should be so imprudent as to banish him to hell, Christian or otherwise.

The soft fur under my fingers vibrated gently. One ginger kitten had sneaked into my bed with us and, having exhausted itself chasing its own tail and Athos’ feet and mine, had fallen asleep in the crook of my lover’s neck. One tiny ear twitched as my finger passed over it; ten tiny claws and needle-sharp fangs pierced my flesh. I hissed in shock at the sudden assault and tugged the predatory furball off my hand by its tail. It hissed back.

“Be good, kitten.” A soft purr against my collarbone. Athos’ lips curved up in a smile and his tongue swiped delicately over my skin.

“You let this son of Belial into our bed,” I complained, untangling the handful of purr from Athos’ hair.

“I believe the only son of Belial around here is the owner of this bed,” my insolent godling whispered, pressing soft kisses into the ridge of my clavicle and a hard cock into the top of my thigh.

“I see your stint into the underworld hasn’t sapped you of your vigour.”

“It takes more than the Titans of Tartarus to etiolate me.” Athos seized me around the hips and rolled us over. “It takes a Slavic demon.” His eyes kindled with Olympian fire as he smirked down on me: the ancient, heathen smile that set an inferno ablaze within my chest and my loins. My heart fluttered against his, my cock swelled against his cock, my lips burned against his lips. The eternal flame. The everlasting light. Darkness dispersed, light poured in through the cracks, light filled my soul, _nunc et in aeternum, Amen._

**Author's Note:**

> OH HAI AUDIENCE!
> 
> Do you ever find yourself intimidated by the massively long comment threads on our fics? Do you ever find yourself thinking "WTF, there are 80 comments in this thread and it's just 3 people talking to each other, ffs!"? Do you then find yourself thinking, "I'm just gonna leave kudos and go sit in the corner _over there_."? 
> 
> Well DON'T. We want you to come talk to us! WE LOVE IT. Feed us. Nom nom nom we're hungry and tired from all the fuck we make for you. Pour les Disgustoids!


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